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Things and stuff
I did something to my thumb over the weekend it seems - it's really not happy with me.
I'm supposed to pick up our first box of CSA veggies and cheese today. (It's not my regular day, because of Reunions, so I'm a little concerned that something's going to go wrong.) Excited, possibly out of proportion. But! We can haz farm! We're getting fiddleheads and sprouts and goat cheese and portobellos and cheddar. Sprouts! Fiddleheads! I didn't move quite fast enough to claim the ramps - ah well. But yay for the CSA farm truck!
I read a fascinating (if horrifying) book over the weekend - Royal Babylon: The Alarming History of European Royalty by Karl Shaw. You knew they were inbred and ugly and there's a couple ones famous for being mad. But they're so much worse than you ever realized. It's full of amazing tidbits of information such as:
- Frederick the Great's father collected tall people. As in, kidnapped tall guys from all over Europe. Other countries generally thought it was funny, until he kidnapped their citizens. They did figure out, though, that their diplomats could get him to agree to almost anything as long as they gave him a couple really tall guys to keep.
- Frederick the Great, by the way, was the guy's third child. The first one they accidentally killed by cramming a crown on his head for his christening and breaking his skull. The second one they killed by leaving him right next to the cannons that announced his birth. Kid died of shock.
- Catherine the Great's husband Peter was more interested in playing with his toy soldiers than anything else. Such as ruling. Or sleeping with his wife. He played with his tin soldiers under the covers instead of consummating his marriage. For years. She finally managed to fool him into thinking that what little activity they had counted as sex - after she was already pregnant by another man. So the Romanovs? After this pair, none of them are actually biologically Romanovs. After Peter's mother died and he ascended the throne, he could play with real soldiers. He marched them around until he got bored. He didn't have a convenient war, so he made them fire cannons off at all hours of the day to pretend St. Petersburg was under siege. He wanted to fire off a thousand at once, but his advisors managed to convince him that that would probably make the entire city and palace crumble. After enough international embarrassment, Catherine finally led a coup. Everyone was happy.
There's more, quite a lot more. Most of it darkly hilarious. The organization isn't great, so the author goes in circles a bit and the first half is definitely more interesting than the second. But it's amazing. If you read even one of these in fiction, you'd accuse the author of being unrealistic.
I'm supposed to pick up our first box of CSA veggies and cheese today. (It's not my regular day, because of Reunions, so I'm a little concerned that something's going to go wrong.) Excited, possibly out of proportion. But! We can haz farm! We're getting fiddleheads and sprouts and goat cheese and portobellos and cheddar. Sprouts! Fiddleheads! I didn't move quite fast enough to claim the ramps - ah well. But yay for the CSA farm truck!
I read a fascinating (if horrifying) book over the weekend - Royal Babylon: The Alarming History of European Royalty by Karl Shaw. You knew they were inbred and ugly and there's a couple ones famous for being mad. But they're so much worse than you ever realized. It's full of amazing tidbits of information such as:
- Frederick the Great's father collected tall people. As in, kidnapped tall guys from all over Europe. Other countries generally thought it was funny, until he kidnapped their citizens. They did figure out, though, that their diplomats could get him to agree to almost anything as long as they gave him a couple really tall guys to keep.
- Frederick the Great, by the way, was the guy's third child. The first one they accidentally killed by cramming a crown on his head for his christening and breaking his skull. The second one they killed by leaving him right next to the cannons that announced his birth. Kid died of shock.
- Catherine the Great's husband Peter was more interested in playing with his toy soldiers than anything else. Such as ruling. Or sleeping with his wife. He played with his tin soldiers under the covers instead of consummating his marriage. For years. She finally managed to fool him into thinking that what little activity they had counted as sex - after she was already pregnant by another man. So the Romanovs? After this pair, none of them are actually biologically Romanovs. After Peter's mother died and he ascended the throne, he could play with real soldiers. He marched them around until he got bored. He didn't have a convenient war, so he made them fire cannons off at all hours of the day to pretend St. Petersburg was under siege. He wanted to fire off a thousand at once, but his advisors managed to convince him that that would probably make the entire city and palace crumble. After enough international embarrassment, Catherine finally led a coup. Everyone was happy.
There's more, quite a lot more. Most of it darkly hilarious. The organization isn't great, so the author goes in circles a bit and the first half is definitely more interesting than the second. But it's amazing. If you read even one of these in fiction, you'd accuse the author of being unrealistic.
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Nature has been screaming out for centuries that these people shouldn't breed (given the fact that the southern European royalty tends to be extraordinarily short, obese, hunchbacked, have tongues too big for their mouths, stupid, and insane, while the northern European royalty tends to be hemophiliac, ugly, nymphomaniac, stupid, and insane). But because royalty was only allowed to marry other royalty, you took whatever prince/ss you could get, even if they were psychopathic, impotent, and drooling.
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My favorite part about Fredrick's father's tall guy collection is that he assembled them into a fearsomely tall regiment to strike fear in the hearts of enemies, but then decided they were way too valuable to actually fight or go anywhere. Sometimes he made them march in his chambers when he wasn't feeling well, or so I've heard. Such a messed up family...
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The tall guys? Not big fans of this. They regularly revolted, ran away, etc. (Since a lot of them had been kidnapped.) He'd have deserters horribly mutilated. (It was easy to find them - they were very tall.) The tall guy regiment set fire to the town more than once in attempts to escape.
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